Casablanca 82nd. Anniversary
Rick Blaine woke up...will we?
Today marks the 82nd anniversary of one of the greatest films of all time and one of my favorites, 'Casablanca.'
The United States wasn't yet involved in the war with the fascists of Germany and Italy and imperial Japan. Americans fussed over providing assistance to the democracies of Europe as they were attacked by expansionist despots, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
Humphrey Bogart's character Rick Blaine is an American who tries to remain isolationist. But events carry him into the conflict.
Had Franklin Roosevelt been able to convince recalcitrant Americans to provide help to Great Britain and France and other free peoples sooner, the global cataclysm of World War 2 and America's involvement in it might have been avoided.
But, to borrow the language of Rick Blaine, we sometimes become so involved with the problems and desires that don't amount to a hill of beans and forget that the world's bullies and what they do is everybody's business. But while America slept--"I bet they're asleep everywhere," Blaine at one time tells his friend, Sam--the despots attacked, taking much of Europe.
It's a lesson we seem to always be forgetting. Rick Blaine and then America finally woke up. Will we?
